Across the literary pages: reinventing ‘Bloomsday’

Although it’s over seventy years since his death, the attitude quoted under the OED entry for ‘Joycean’ from Eric Partridge’s World of Words still persists: ‘Joyceans are artificial, but, except at the cost of a highly gymnastic cerebration, unintelligible’. This ‘Bloomsday’, an annual celebration on the day the novel is set, Radio 4 decided their listeners needed a gentle mental workout.

First, a warm-up with Thursday’s edition of In Our Time as Melvyn Bragg was on hand to help us decipher the playful complexity of an author who readily admitted: ‘I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that’s the only way of insuring one’s immortality.’ Then, on Saturday, the five and a half hour heavily edited version of Ulysses began in earnest. Interspersed with commentary from Mark Lawson, and irritating aperçus of modern day Ireland (it’s bad, don’t go), the reading was broadcast in real time starting at 9am with ‘nutty gizzards’ and finishing at around midnight with Molly Bloom’s erotic recollections on her chamberpot.